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"It was just a matter of time before the expectations exceeded the results," said Scott Kessler, an analyst with Standard & Poor's.

For most companies, Google's quarter would have been ample reason to celebrate. But strong performance isn't enough when a stock is as lofty as Google's, which was trading at a price- to-earnings ratio of 96, many times higher than most companies.

Google said its fourth-quarter profit was $372.2 million ($1.22 per share), up 82 percent from $204.1 million (71 cents) a year ago.

Excluding the cost of one-time items, such as a donation to the company's charitable foundation, Google would have earned $1.54 per share. The consensus expectation of Wall Street analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call was for a profit of $1.76 per share.

In an interview, Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, blamed the results partly on higher taxes than the company expected. Its tax rate was nearly 42 percent, compared with 30 percent paid in the two previous quarters.

Schmidt deflected concern for the future. "We don't run the company for the short term, we run it for the long term," he said.

Google's fourth-quarter revenue was $1.91 billion, up 86 percent from $1.03 billion for the same period in 2004. Subtracting commissions paid to partner Web sites, Google's revenue would have been $1.28 billion.

Google's executives only briefly mentioned the gap between expectations and reality during a conference call with analysts. Instead, they mostly emphasized the huge potential market for the company, a long list of new products in the pipeline and a need to continue to invest heavily in research and development.

Google is the most popular U.S. search engine, with 46.3 percent of the market in November, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. Yahoo Inc., of Sunnyvale, trailed with 23.4 percent of the market, followed by Microsoft with 11.4 percent.

Safa Rashtchy, an analyst for Piper Jaffray & Co., said negative investor reaction to Google's quarter is overblown and that its business is still solid. He believes the tax issue is temporary, adding that he sees no reason to reduce his $600 price target for Google shares. "They didn't miss on the execution, they didn't miss on market share," Rashtchy said. He added that Google's shortfall was inevitable because the company doesn't give financial forecasts, making reliable analyst estimates that much more difficult.

In the past, Google has routinely beaten those expectations, often by huge margins, propelling its shares ever higher.

While Google has mostly soared as a public company, it had recently encountered some turbulence. The stock suffered a temporary drop on news that the federal government issued a subpoena for its search records, something the company has vowed to fight.